Patients with primary affective disorders were studied on the dimension of marital dominance. Spouses and patients were compared with each other and with couples from the community, using the Conflict in Marriage Scale (CIMS). Patients acknowledged, more often than their spouses, that the partner made final decisions in circumstances of disagreement on family matters. Women patients could be effectively discriminated from women spouses and from community women on this issue. Affectively ill women saw themselves as yielding, after disagreement, to the decision of husbands who seldom changed an opinion. Their male spouses seemed oblivious to these perceptions. This investigation has now been completed; the project is therefore discontinued.